Are you good at identifying emotions/feelings within yourself?

I think this notion of interoception is really interesting. Ask my partner and he would say "there's always something wrong" with me (headache, feeling cold, too hot, pain in my side,  knees, foot etc...). On the other hand, theres other things like I don't notice when I'm thirsty. Or I do and il make a drink but just not drink it.

When I was diagnosed with anxiety last year, I went to the doctors with my symptoms (one of which was I felt I was losing the plot). I don't know how I could've missed that it was anxiety given that we had finally moved house, there were loads of repairs needed and I watched my grandma slowly deteriorate until her death, which was preceded by a sudden death of another family member the day before. All of this with work stresses on top. Even at the doctors I just casually mentioned the bereavement like it wasn't a big deal. I also had some difficulty describing my physical symptoms to the doctor. 

At the doctors before now, I've realised, that unless I'm asked something outright, I don't mention it. Like it doesn't occur to me.

I know for sure in the past I have cried because I didn't know how to express my feelings or didn't understand why I felt a certain way so crying was the only way to release.

On reflection, I think a non-alexithymic person would have dealt with all this maybe differently as they would be more understanding of their feelings. 

Intesnse feelings....I feel this is something I can relate to. I feel that quite a lot it's "all or nothing". I think I might have been seen as a bit of a drama queen by my parents when younger, I dont know. 

A few years ago my partner and I were looking at houses. We saw one, he really liked it. I went along with it and after the second viewing on the way home we decided to go for it. I got home and threw the ironing basket and broke it. Like an outburst as I had all these feelings inside. It wasn't about getting my own way it was about getting my feelings out the only way I knew. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to buy this house. At no point did it ever occur to me to say "no I don't want to move there". I don't don think it even occurred to me that I felt that way.  We didn't buy it in the end due to the survey. It was only about 2 years later I realised I am an adult and I have the agency to speak out if it's something I don't want to do.

Auto correct kept changing interoception to interception. It is interoception... 

Hi... I am no expert but have read and studied quite a lot about interoception which is basically our brains ability to process signals from the body.

Sensory integration theory links this with the ability to accurately perceive and differentiate the subtle signals from our body (the changes in physiological state) that are linked with emotion and physical wellbeing for example:

• Interception enables us to feel the sensation that our bladder is full and we use this information to know we have to go urinate to relieve the discomfort.

• When we are anxious our fight or flight response (sympathetic nervous system) is activated and our body prepares itself for fight of flight.. Things like increasing heart rate to provide more oxygen to muscles, clenching our stomach muscles to protect or internal organs. For most people with adequate interoceptive processing they use this information plus context to work out they are anxious. 

Like our other sensory systems there appears to be some differences in the way that we perceive and process sensory information (which Interestingly also became part of this thread) so it would make sense that there may be differences that we process interception.

Like the other senses we may be over (feeling every signal from our body really strongly) or under sensitive to (not getting enough of a signal) interception and have difficulty with discrimination (i.e. We might feel the sensation but have difficulty interpreting what it is) 

This theory makes a lot of sense to me because I struggle to feel when I am full or hungry (until extreme states) and I also struggle to identify or feel most emotions. I find it difficult to differentiate between emotional pain and physical pain too. For example I had a head ache the other day (I think) and was being really impatient with people, but it wasn't until my colleague who knows me well suggested that I might be in pain and to take some ibuprofen that I worked out this was actually the cause.

I also no some people that are highly responsive to interception and can literally feel every sensation from their body and they really struggle with massive swings in emotional states throughout the day.

I would be interested in what others think about this theory. 

I have read all the posts on this thread and I can't add anything that's not on here.

I feel things extremely never in between I just don't sense the subtle emotions until they explode and i feel like Chernobyl on Ritalin is pulling my mind through a mincer. 

Hmm interesting reading this post and some of the replies. 

I always describe myself  as someone who feels very intensely. 

But I wonder if it’s more that I don’t recognise it till it’s overloaded me and it has become too intense? 

A question I almost always evade is, “how are you?” Or “how have you been doing?” Because either i’m unsure how to respond because I realise I don’t know how I feel, or i’m Feeling too much and too scared to answer because I don’t want them knowing some of the horrible thoughts I have in my head. 

I've been reading up on alexithymia recently. I've read a bit before but was thinking about it again as I've got a check up next week at the doctors Re my mental health and physucal anxiety symptoms. I know he's going to ask me if there's been improvement.  I honestly don't know and I don't know what to tell him.

Ive looked at some online alexithymia tests but I've struggled to answer the questions because I don't actually know what I think about some of them.  Like I don't know if I can't identify some of the things in the questions in myself or not. Is this a big clue that I could be alexithymic?!

My feelings are also often different to others and have different intensities for different things.

I may be really sad that a tv series has finished or character has died where if someone died in the same room as me I would have less of an emotional response (depending on the person)

Yes, plus the other thing i learnt, probably in the schoolyard, is that it very often isn't safe to reveal your true feelings.  Mine are often out of kilter with others' and can be more intense too.  I think this marks me as different and can make me vulnerable to bullying.  As with the workplace, I rapidly developed a habit of hiding any signs of what might be considered to be weakness.  Where was the real me supposed to go?

I understand what you mean an alexithymic person has 3 phases.

1.Extremely happy

2.Neutral

3.Badly depressed

Another aspect to this is exemplified by  something that happened to me today. Yesterday I was happy - happy enough to make a point of telling my wife about it. Today, from just before lunchtime until about 9:30 in the evening I have had a strange dragging sadness that I couldn't identify the source of. It sapped my energy and enthusiasm and tinged everything with melancholy and wistfulness and regret. And now it's gone again. I have no idea what caused it.

I have emotions triggered as well like at a funeral when I wasn’t crying I was just straight faced but then saw the sadness from my family and I instantly turned round and hugged my mum tightly as the face of others pushed me past my activation energy (in chemistry terms).

The worst I felt was when I was getting to grips I was autistic and I slumped into bad depression and self hatred but luckily that lasted about a week so no long term affects were caused. 

My actions have definitely been masked or manipulated to fit the outside world. It probably happened around the age of 12 so that I wasn’t picked on by kids at secondary school although some of the traits I can never mask like social anxiety and stimulation. The only times I am truly myself is when I’m around my friend with Aspergers and bipolar or just by myself.

Although my other friends know I’m different (autistic) I still mask it. This makes them think that it doesn’t effect me as much as it does. I think the more you hold it in the more it hurts inside which is why I like to be with my Bipolar friend or by myself.

I get what you mean.

I often feel neutral for most of the time but then I almost dig deep and think things over like what’s happened through my life and recently and the things I tend to remember kind of trigger an emotional response of how I should be feeling.

if I remember the good times then I begin to feel good and vice versa.

I find it difficult to explain myself as in character and the emotions I am feeling.

I’m no longer a really reactive person  or the danger to people I once was but I still don’t take *** from no one and would quite happily fight to the death for survival or my friend.

but when I try to describe that to people they think that I want to fight people.

I also can’t express my feelings on experiences. I’ll with say it’s good or bad but then they’ll say how good and without a comparison to another experience I can’t express anything or explain how good.

Definitely.  However, i'm not sure it's always worked very well for me.  Yes, it has certainly validated my (sometimes hazy) sense of my own feelings, leading me to take appropriate action.  But I think that, as a child, i often looked to others' words and reactions as an indication of how I was supposed to feel in situations and how intensely i was supposed to feel it.  Then that reaction in me was somehow strengthened or given permission.  E.g I'd fall down and graze my knee, which hurt, but then i only started to cry once someone else said, "I'd be crying if that happened to me."   Or i'd feel mildly annoyed and someone would ask, "Aren't you angry?" prompting me to focus even more on the reasons I should be angry and then actually feel it too.  

i now sometimes have to pause and wonder whether my feelings are less real and less intense than they would otherwise be, because i've been behaving like that for years and it's merged into my masking.  I've only been diagnosed for about six months and am having a bit of trouble working out what's me and what isn't.  e.g. I recently got very finickity about something trivial and immediately had the thought, "Oh.  I think I'm being that friend I used to have at school right now."

This all makes me wonder not just about autism/alexythemia but about the extent to which feelings can be learnt, even though we think of them as somehow natural.  E.g. "This happened, so naturally I felt this." when actually there will be some intermediate stages in that process and, although it's happening quickly, it maybe isn't automatic.      

Hi I would like to add something else. Does anyone else need someone else's opinion to confirm their own feelings? It's like I'm not sure how I am supposed to feel or be, but then if I have guidance or direction off someone this helps me know what to do or how to feel.  Eg I've been off work with anxiety and didn't know if I should go back to work or not. It's taken about 4 other people to tell me I'm still not right and need to stay off.  Ive felt like I couldn't make this decision myself, and similarly when going off work I didn't know what to do.  I feel like a non AS or non alexithymic person would be able to understand this about themselves straightaway.  I had to ring my manager for an update last week and on the phone I was going "yeah I'm fine" cos I'd had 2 good days. When in realitythis is s long term thing im going through. I feel often like I can't see past whatever current mood or frame of mind I'm in.

Can anyone relate to any of this? Apologies if it's been mentioned before but the thread is long so I've not read everything.

Ah yes, me too I have a meditation app and one of the exercises asks me to 'label' what I'm feeling - I always come up with 'anxious' . . .

Hello anyone still here

THANK YOU.  THANK YOU! 

Please teach more of these "Food Group" metaphors.  "You" should create a website discussing this because I can't find these things on the Internet.  I'd bet on you to become rich as someone will buy the website from you because there would be nothing like it.  You could spread it through the very young educational systems.  

Wow.  We all have the same simple symptoms.  Just because we may have a large or small amygdala, by NO means, means that we cannot learn.  For years, I've been asking for help.  Why do normal do not want to teach how to overcome basic feelings.  For example, if someone would teach me what sadness commonly feels like, or what other emotions feel like that create a "meltdown"... then people like us can learn.  Instead, we all sit here and describe our "symptoms" as similar but only a few of us know how to deal with it.  Teach us!  Teach me what it feels like to feel.  Isn't that the definition of insanity....always doing the same thing and only getting the same results.  This is insane that so many people suffer same symptoms, and no one has "thought" of how to teach us.  Just a blame game....that we are dysfunctional because we have a "slightly" abnormal organ in our body.  Just because I have small hands, does it mean I am not smart or can't succeed.  Success is having an education.  An education is being taught.  We need coaches to teach us, role play with us to be more social.  But the idea of being social is one that only can be taught...that's how everyone learned.  But for many of us on the outside who don't know how to be social, its difficult to be social because as an adult it is hard to learn these things. 

Maybe not only I will thank you, but so will my body.  My body hurts.  Help!  Teach me what I should feel.  Kudos to the person who described what it means to "curl up" in the fetal position....crying....or kicking one's legs.  I see these metaphors in television and movies, but with repetitive reading....I can make it an understood behavior that I recognize in others or demonstrate to others.  You should make a website and earn from it.  I am more than positive it will be a success!  Thank you for teaching those 3 metaphors. Does anyone hear me out there?  Agree or disagree about teaching us because obviously we aren't stupid.  If they don't want to help then we should help ourselves.  I assure we will not only help ourselves, but society in general because I've heard that "Autism" is on the rise.  Probably because we are becoming more isolated by technology.  The world opens for the wealthy but for the less many become isolated, and society becomes less socially educated.  I'm sure a renaissance will happen again in a few hundred years as humans fall into a modern dark age (in the technological) era.

I used to get into an immense amount of trouble when I was at school due to being thought of as 'smiling' or 'laughing' inappropriately.

I have now mastered the esoteric art of the 'deadpan' expression, the result is that I am often told to 'cheer up'.